High-profile arrests have been expected for a very long time. For over two years now, Ukrainians have been demanding punishment for those in power who were guilty of escalating events on the Maidan and then the war in Donbas. The question “Why aren’t the Regionals being punished?” is hotter than ever, and it’s only recently that the Prosecutor General’s Office has tried to answer it. Now Oleksandr Yefremov, ex-Head of Luhansk Oblast State Administration, then First Deputy Head of the Party of Regions and generally one of the more odious ex-Regionals, is sitting in jail awaiting trial

In an exclusive interview with The Ukrainian Week, the director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NAB) spoke about fighting corruption in the judiciary, the creation of a “corruption registry”, and its regional management of anti-corruption efforts.
Interviewed by Tetiana Omelchenko

Amnesty International urged Ukrainian authorities to stop the high level of torture and other ill treatment which is being carried out by its police, is said in a statement on the official website of the organization.

Kyiv and Strasbourg have recently been engaged in active dialogue — PACE President Jean-Claude Mignon visited Ukraine, and Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Pshonka travelled to the main office of the Council of Europe. The Ukrainian Week asked Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe, Mykola Tochytskyi, about the outcome and context of this dialogue.

Mikael Lyngbo, Legal Expert for the Danish Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, former Chief of Police and prosecutor from Denmark, told The Ukrainian Week about the reforming of Ukrainian prosecution and the practical implementation of the new Criminal Procedure Code

The mounting selective justice and persecution of opposition leaders - all of this reminds one of the Stalin era when murder was followed by accusations in order to eliminate everyone the regime viewed as enemy

A slew of Ukrainian journalists, spin doctors and simply experts-turned-propagandists are working to clean up the international image of the Ukrainian government. But as life would have it, there is always somebody willing to spoil it all. First Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin recently did precisely that at the annual YES (Yalta European Strategy) conference.

Several law enforcement officers who were responsible for producing cases against Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuriy Lutsenko have been promoted. Intriguingly, almost all of them have been moved to Ivano-Frankivsk

On May 16, Ukrainian filmmaker currently jailed in Russia as a political prisoner went on a hunger strike. In a public letter he wrote that he would only stop the strike if all 64 Ukrainian prisoners jailed in Russia for politically-motivated grounds are released

The opposition in Ukraine is mostly reactive and it chooses actions that will be most useful for criticizing the current Administration or gaining the attention of a specific part of the electorate. What Ukraine needs most right now is a consolidating program and a party that could present its own alternative for the country